


ice cold pool

by albinomagpie



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: 1990s, Angst, Coming Out, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Minor Drug Use, Mutual Pining, Pining, Underage Drinking, Vulnerability, teenage boys trying their best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 20:51:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21308429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/albinomagpie/pseuds/albinomagpie
Summary: He eventually sees them through the cloying haze of body-warm air that’s wrapped itself around the crowd—Richie looks as though he’s attempting to dance with Eddie and force a bit of vodka on him at the same time. Though the bodies around Bill are pressed up tight against one another, everyone’s given the pair a few feet of berth to avoid the thrash of skinny limbs currently engaged in a sort of dance-wrestle. The chatter of his classmates’ voices has melted into an indistinct blanket of noise, but Bill can still make out Richie singing loudly to the music and the shrill tones of an irate Eddie.(Alternatively: It's 1992, they're 16, and Richie's been unusually quiet lately)
Relationships: Bill Denbrough & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 42
Kudos: 275
Collections: It Faves





	ice cold pool

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1992

Sally Mueller’s Halloween party was the fucking place to be on Halloween, and this year, the Losers had scored invites. 

At least, this is what Richie Tozier had hollered out the passenger side window of Bill’s beat-up second-hand van when Bill had told him. Bill had somewhat outgrown his Loser-ness as the years had passed, and at school he was well-known for his soft-spoken nature and his ability to make friends with just about anyone. The consequence of this was, of course, that he was invited to lots of parties. And true to form, Big Bill would always accept with one condition—that he could bring a few friends along. The point being, high school parties were deliciously new ground for Richie, and he attended every one armed with a bottle of whatever could be most conveniently stolen from his parents’ liquor cabinet and a head full of new jokes and Voices to try out on whoever was foolish enough to engage him in tipsy conversation.

The Muellers have an enormous house on the north side of Derry, a house affectionately referred to by Richie as “Derry’s first and only McMansion”. It’s tradition for Sally’s parents to skip town during the closest weekend to Halloween, leaving their only daughter to ‘throw an insane party and totally fuck shit up’, Richie explains to Eddie as they drive to the party. He’s in the passenger seat of Mike’s truck, all twisted around and pressing his cheek against the headrest to talk to a sullen Eddie, who’s sitting next to Bill in the backseat.

“All I’m saying is, there better be something to drink besides alcohol. I _cannot_ go home drunk. My mom will be able to tell, Richie. She fucking will,” Eddie says, glaring at Richie as he blinks his magnified brown eyes and wiggles his pilfered mickey of vodka enticingly in Eddie’s general direction. 

“C’mon, Rich, at least hide the booze until we get there,” Mike laughs from the driver’s seat. 

“Of course, Mikey, whatever you say,” Richie says sweetly, causing Eddie to scoff audibly from the backseat. Mike had been kind enough to DD for the group that night, and as such Richie was being downright saccharine. Richie reaches out and pokes Mike’s chest through his straw-stuffed plaid shirt. “Are you sure you don’t have a heart? You seem pretty full-a-love to me.” 

“Are you fucking kidding me, Rich? It’s the fucking tin man that needed a heart, dumbass. The scarecrow didn’t have a _brain_. Not unlike like some people in this car,” Eddie says scornfully. 

“Well, excuse the fuck out of me, Eds. At least Mikey has an interesting costume. Front seat is for interesting people only. The two vampires and the lamest costume in the world get the backseat.” 

“H-hey,” Bill protests lightly. Marty McFly was not a lame costume; it was a smart choice when going to a party at which there would be girls. Easy to put together and still possible to look attractive. 

“Okay, we are _not_ starting with the two vampires thing again. I physically cannot go through that argument a second time,” says Eddie, who is sporting a black cape over a white tee and jeans and drawn-on fangs courtesy of Richie and a Sharpie that he had insisted to Eddie was a face paint marker. Richie had told Bill as much when Eddie had gone to the bathroom to inspect Richie’s work, and Bill had agreed to keep the secret simply because he did not have the energy to deal with Eddie’s wrath if he found out. 

“I second that,” says Stan from Bill’s other side, who is also dressed as a vampire.

It had been a point of contention between the two for the past week. They had neglected to corroborate their costume choices amongst the group until Tuesday, at which point it had been discovered that ‘vampire’ was not as unique and original an idea as two of them had clearly thought. Eddie had insisted that this was the _only_ costume he would be capable of getting past his mother and he simply would _not_ go for anything else, and anyways, couldn’t Stan just go as a rabbi and borrow things from his dad? Well, Stan had felt this was quite offensive, and told Eddie as much. It had started a whole debacle in which Stan had refused to sit at the same lunch table as Eddie until he apologized, and Eddie had refused to apologize for a remark that he didn’t _mean_ to be offensive, and this had gone on until poor Ben had been so stressed out that Bill had to step in and say listen, you’ll just both be vampires, it’s fine, it’s just a Halloween party. Richie had been somewhat disappointed at the resolution because he self-admittedly loved the drama of a good in-group dispute, and Ben had been so distraught by the whole argument that he had withdrawn from coming to the party altogether.

So, yeah, they weren’t getting into that again, though Bill had to admit that Stan made a much better vampire than Eddie – he was wearing an old-school white blouse and black pants and had gone through the effort to paint his face white, not to mention the set of vampire fangs he was sporting. 

“I am not going to put anything that was purchased _unwrapped _into my mouth, thankyouverymuch,” Eddie had said when they had all gone shopping yesterday. 

“Then you’re not going to be the best vampire at the party, Eds,” Richie had said. “But don’t worry, you’ll still be the cutest.” He had pinched Eddie’s cheek, inciting an indignant noise of protest from his friend. “No offense, Stan.”

“None taken,” Stan had said, looking like he’d very much rather be anywhere else. 

In the car, Eddie gestures at Richie, who is still grinning at him from the front seat. “Anyways, asshole, how can you say the front seat is for interesting people? What the fuck are you even supposed to be?”

Richie is dressed in one of his regular printed button-ups over a tee and jeans, with a wide, glossy purple ribbon wrapped around his torso and tied in a bow across his chest. From the ribbon hung a large gift tag, and on it Richie had written TO: WOMEN, FROM: GOD with the same Sharpie he had used to draw Eddie’s fangs. He waggles his eyebrows suggestively. “I’m God’s gift to women, Eds, but you already knew that.”

Thankfully for all of them, that was the moment that Mike pulled up at the Muellers’ house. 

“Okay, kids, out,” says Mike jovially. “I’ll park and be right in.”

“Thank you, Mikey,” Richie singsongs, before hopping out and running towards the house shrieking like a banshee. “Halloween ‘ninety-two, baby!”

“God fucking help us,” grumbles Eddie. “Thanks, Mike, I’ll grab you a soda if these animals have anything non-alcoholic.” He gets out and walks after Richie, shaking his head long-sufferingly.

Bill grins, full of affection for his friends and already a little tipsy from predrinking at Richie’s. “Th-thanks, Mike, we’ll see y-you in there.”

“I’ll stick with Mike, buddy system and all that. Make sure Eddie doesn’t cement his position as Best Vampire of the party, okay?” Stan jokes softly.

That gets a laugh out of Bill. “D-don’t tell him I s-said so, but y-you’re a much buh-better vampire.”

The house is covered in cutesy Halloween décor, fake spiderwebs in every corner and grinning pumpkins sending light dancing up the wood-paneled walls. It’s already spilling over with teenagers when they arrive, stereo blasting a mix of pop music and classic Halloween songs. Bill is greeted by every third or fourth person he passes, everyone smiling and covered in a thin sheen of the sweat-makeup mixture being passed around on the lips of cups and people. He scans the crowd, eyes flitting from face to face as he tries to find Eddie or Richie. He eventually sees them through the cloying haze of body-warm air that’s wrapped itself around the crowd – Richie looks as though he’s attempting to dance with Eddie and force a bit of vodka on him at the same time. Though the bodies around Bill are pressed up tight against one another, everyone’s given the pair a few feet of berth to avoid the thrash of skinny limbs currently engaged in a sort of dance-wrestle. The chatter of his classmates’ voices has melted into an indistinct blanket of noise, but Bill can still make out Richie singing loudly to the music and the shrill tones of an irate Eddie. 

“—I will not be drinking, Richie, there’s no way! My mom’s like a fucking bloodhound, she’d smell it on me as soon as I walk in the door!”

“—_if you’re thinkin’ of bein’ my baby_—you can stay at mine, Eds!—_black or white_—” 

“Okay, first of all _don’t_ call me Eds, and second of all, I already told you, I _can’t_, my mom—”

“Hey,” Stan’s voice comes from Bill’s left, only slightly muffled by the set of fangs. “Gosh, they haven’t been kicked out yet? That’s gotta be a new record.”

“Those two are gonna get us all un-invited to every cool party from now until we graduate,” Mike snorts gently.

Bill laughs. “Oh, I th-think if they d-don’t break it up soon, we’ll all be re-relegated to _tuh-terminal nerd status_. Not even gr-graduation can save us from th-that.”

In front of them, Eddie snatches his hand from where it was clutched in Richie’s and makes his way over to them. Richie throws his hands out in a gesture of bewilderment when Eddie looks back at him, but he’s grinning widely. His mouth makes the general shape of the words ‘come on, Eds’_._

“As if he doesn’t know exactly what he’s done. Fucker,” Eddie says with narrowed eyes, betrayed by the slightest upturn of his lips. “Come on, Mike, let’s go see if they have anything for us to drink here.” He grabs Mike’s arm and drags him off in the direction of the kitchen.

Richie’s found some girl to dance with, which doesn’t surprise Bill. Richie was an awkward-looking kid, all mismatched magazine-scrap features pasted onto a lanky body, but at sixteen he had a strange way of making it all look very chic. Eddie had said once that Richie was the type of weird-looking that just made you want to stare and stare and stare, and a handful of girls at school had certainly subscribed to that philosophy. 

Bill nudges Stan. “D-d’you wanna mingle a l-little bit?”

Stan shrugs and nods. “Yeah, why not. I think Richie’ll be fine on his own.” The girl is now grinding on Richie’s crotch as he dances spastically behind her. He catches their eyes, grins and waves. He points enthusiastically down at the girl dancing up on him, hollering something that Bill can’t quite make out, but he thinks he hears the words ‘Eddie’s mom’ in there somewhere.

Stan rolls his eyes, but he’s laughing. “What a fucking dork.”

They meander their way around the house, chatting aimlessly with classmates here and there. Bill and Stan go through a couple of lukewarm beers each, and by the time they make it back down to the main living area the world has acquired a dreamy haze. Through his slightly drunken state, Bill spots Eddie and Mike along the far wall and doubles over with laughter.

“What is it?” Stan asks, but his mouth is already quirked up in barely contained amusement.

Bill points to Eddie and is promptly sent into another fit of laughter. Eddie is standing rigidly against the wall, arms crossed over his diminutive frame and mouth tightened disapprovingly. He would look somewhat intimidating if it weren’t for his Sharpie-d on fangs and pink cheeks. 

“H-he luh-luh-looks like the w-world’s smallest ch-chaperone.” Bill howls. Stan starts laughing too, and for a minute they’re both reduced to giggly puddles of boys, alcohol-soaked and carefree. 

Mike is standing next to Eddie, looking much looser and swaying slightly to the music. He’s a saint, really, Bill thinks. There’s no one else that could attend a party dead sober with an also sober Eddie as his main companion all night and still be that good-natured.

“Hey guys,” Mike says amiably once Bill and Stan have recovered and approached the sober pair. “You guys find Richie?”

“F-find Richie?” Bill asks. “I-I thought y-you guys had him?”

Stan snorts.

Eddie is scowling. “He went off with Marcia. They were dancing, and I saw her dragging him upstairs.”

“Are you sure dragging is the right word for it, Eddie? He looked pretty psyched about it earlier,” says Stan. 

If possible, Eddie scowls harder. 

Good for Richie, Bill thinks vaguely. As much as his friend likes to joke and brag about his sexual conquests, Bill has it on good authority (the authority being Richie, from a few weeks ago when he had managed to score some weed from some senior kids and had run straight to Bill’s house to split a joint with him) that Richie is yet to have his first kiss. Well, maybe not anymore. Plus, if that was Marcia Fadden, she’s one of the more popular girls in school, which is good because Richie’s social cred could quite literally not go any lower.

They’re all standing around somewhat awkwardly when Bill sees Richie come barreling down the stairs to join them against the wall, looking red in the face and breathing rather harshly. Bill wouldn’t be surprised, except the blush painting Richie’s cheeks and neck looks more like fever-heat than arousal. His hair is tousled and his purple ribbon is almost undone from around his chest. Eddie’s face appears to be trying to rival Richie’s with its deep red colour, and Bill suddenly feels the need to diffuse the odd tension.

“A-alright, Rich? Y-you living up to your co-costume yet?”

Richie’s eyes widen momentarily, and he shoots Bill a weak smile. “Hah, yeah, Big Bill, you know it. Hey, guys, listen, I’m not feeling great, can we get out of here?”

Mike, the saint that he is, doesn’t even hesitate. “Sure thing, Rich, I’ll go pull up the car.” Eddie wordlessly follows Mike out, refusing to look Richie in the eye.

“Everything alright, Richie?” Stan asks softly, eyes full of concern. “What happened?”

“No, it’s nothing, it’s just—” Richie takes a shuddering breath. “—I—Marcia—it’s nothing.”

Bill blinks rapidly. He looks at Stan, who’s frowning slightly, looking just as confused as Bill feels.

“Okay, Rich, you d-don’t hafta t-tell us, but if you wan-wanna talk about it we’re here. L-let’s go.” 

They meet Mike and Eddie out front, the latter already sitting in the backseat. Bill assumes that Richie will take shotgun immediately, as he is wont to do, but to his surprise Richie slides into the backseat. Eddie pointedly looks out the window.

“I will not be sitting next to that the whole way home,” Stan mumbles into Bill’s ear. “Sorry, Billy, that’s all you.”

Bill climbs into the backseat after Richie, although Richie pays little notice.

“C’mon Eddie, you can’t stay mad at me. I promise I’ll never leave you alone at a party again. I pinky promise, cross my heart and hope to die.”

Eddie turns at this, regarding Richie coolly. “Yeah, you fucking better. If you pull that shit again, you won’t have to _hope_ to die.”

“I mean, technically_, you_ left _me_ first, for Mike, which is honestly understandable but—wait, no, I didn’t mean that! It’s all my fault!” Richie pleads as Eddie starts to turn back to the window. “You’re the cutest vampire in the entire world and I’ll never leave you.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Well, I dunno if I’m much of a vampire anymore, my fangs have probably rubbed off by now.” He runs a hand along his lower lip, under which the fangs are still as dark and crisp as when Richie drew them on earlier in the night.

There’s a beat of silence, and then Bill muffles his snort of laughter under his hand. Richie is nowhere near as successful. He starts convulsing in a fit of mirth, giggling with such wild abandonment that it sends Bill and Stan into hysterics.

Eddie is looking at Richie with a dangerously blank look on his face.

“Rich. Tell me what’s funny.”

Richie’s laughter bubbles up from his chest, spilling out of his mouth and filling the car. So utterly joyful is the sound that every occupant of Mike’s car has to smile, even Eddie, though there’s dread in his eyes. 

It takes Richie a few moments to collect himself. “Oh, Eds, we’re gonna laugh so hard about this one day, you and me. We’re gonna really crack up about this.”

“About _what_, Richie.”

Richie rubs at the bridge of his nose in a faux patronizing gesture that he co-opted from Stan, dislodging his thick glasses in the process. “Eddie, baby, listen. Do you really think that there’s such a thing as a face paint marker? Do you think that, if there was such a thing, that I’m the type of person who would own one?”

This sets off Mike as well, his booming laugh joining Bill and Stan’s giggles.

“Richie—what the fuck did you put on my face?” Eddie’s eyes are saucer-wide, his voice getting shriller with every word.

“Ah, relax Eds, a little itty-bit of Sharpie won’t—”

“DID YOU JUST SAY SHARPIE? YOU DID NOT JUST FUCKING SAY SHARPIE.” Eddie hurls himself at Richie, and they start pawing and slapping at each other ineffectually, Richie laughing all the while. 

Bill wipes at his streaming eyes, clutching at his aching stomach as Mike pulls over to break up the scuffle in the backseat. It’s so insane, it’s so Richie and Eddie that Bill has all but forgotten about Richie’s strangeness earlier. This, he thinks, this right here is better than any party.

***

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1992

The rest of the weekend passes uneventfully, a rainy Sunday following the clear crisp Saturday of the party. Bill mostly just meanders around his house, draws a bit, avoids his parents. Things with them hadn’t gotten much better since Georgie’s death, but Bill had made a shaky peace with it and was attempting to be as unbothersome a son as he could manage. 

At some point, Bill starts running through the events of the party in his mind, as one often does the day after a drunken night out. His mind alights on a particular moment that he had since forgotten about—Richie, looking embarrassed or sickly about something-or-other, ushering their group out of the party early. He tries to dig through the background noise of his slightly hazy memories for whatever it was that set Richie off, but comes up empty handed and feeling just as confused as last night. He momentarily considers calling Stan, recollecting the bafflement in his eyes when Richie had stumbled over a non-explanation, but he settles on asking Richie about it the next morning.

Like every other weekday morning, Bill leaves his house at seven-forty on Monday and walks to Richie’s. They’ve been walking to school together ever since second grade, and they have their routine down so tight that Bill never makes it halfway up the Toziers’ driveway before Richie comes hurtling out the front door, already bursting with jokes and songs and Voices at an hour that any other living creature would consider unholy. This Monday, though, Richie is slightly quieter than normal. Bill had been noticing that more often in the past few months, Richie staring into space or worrying at his lower lip with his teeth, lost in thought. It usually only took a gentle nudge to snap him back into his usual hyperactive-Richie-mode, but it was still a phenomenon that Bill noted with some concern. Before he turned sixteen, Bill hadn’t even known that Richie had a contemplative side. 

Bill takes advantage of this quieter Richie to probe him about Saturday.

“S-so, Richie… you had f-fun at the party?” Bill starts, hoping Richie will get his meaning.

Richie barks out a laugh. “God_,_ yeah, that was a good time. Eddie’s fuckin’ face when I told him it was Sharpie, man, I’ve never seen him so mad! He called me, you know, yesterday afternoon, I picked up and Eds just goes ‘fuck you’, like no hello or nothing, and I had half a mind to get my mom on the phone and pretend like it’d been her the whole time and make him think he’d just said ‘fuck you’ to an adult which you know would have killed him but I barely had time to say hi before he started going on about how he had to scrub his face with rubbing alcohol to get the marker out. Said his lip was so red his mom thought it was an allergic reaction and took him to the emergency room.” 

Bill listens politely to Richie’s account of his conversation with Eddie, although he starts feeling rather antsy to ask Richie about his encounter with Marcia before they get to school.

“Y-you make out with any g-girls? Like… wh-what happened with that girl you were d-dancing with? We noticed y-you guys d-disappeared for a little bit.” Bill tries to make his tone light and teasing. 

Richie smirked and shrugged. “Nah, she wanted a piece of this—” he grabs his crotch for effect, “—but I wasn’t into it.”

“Y-you weren’t into it? Rich, M-Marcia is l-like, one of the h-hottest girls at s-school!”

“You sure are invested in whether I did or didn’t make out with Marcia fucking Fadden. Anyways, you know I—I just want it to feel right, and it didn’t. So I made a break for it. It’s whatever.” Richie’s voice takes on a defensive edge and Bill immediately feels guilty. It had felt right for him, with Bev, but Bill had just assumed that Richie just wasn’t the type of person to care about the minutiae of a first kiss. Perhaps Richie was a closet romantic. Stranger things had happened.

“Sorry, I d-didn’t mean it like th-that. Of course you w-want it to feel right,” Bill says gently. “Y-you’ll f-find the right puh-person one day. No n-need to rush.”

Richie shrugs. “Okay, okay, don’t get sappy about it, Big Bill. Sorry I was weird about you asking.” 

They fill the rest of the walk with chitchat about which classmates were wasted on Saturday and who was predicted to show up to school with hickeys on their necks. As they part ways for homeroom, Bill feels much better about the earlier tension between Richie and him. He so rarely gets to see Richie’s soft side that he sometimes forgets its existence, but the last thing he wants to do is make Richie feel bad about it.

The Monday after a big party is always exciting, hallways bursting with gossip. Bill’s first period English passes by fairly quickly, but second period Math is always the bane of his school day. It’s the only class that most of the popular girls have together, and as such it’s ended up less as a math class and more as a designated time for catching up on who did what with who’s boyfriend over the weekend.

Bill usually tried his best to ignore the gossip, predominantly due to the fact that he would be sent to remedial math next semester if his grades kept on their downwards slope, but today he keeps picking up on Richie’s name being murmured across the classroom. After the third or fourth time, he resigns himself to an utterly unproductive period, and taps the shoulder of Jenny Peterson.

Jenny is a sweet girl, the type of wholly inoffensive person about whom no one had a negative word to say. Bill had had a minor crush on her at the beginning of the year, but this may be due to the fact that she uses strawberry-scented shampoo and sits in front of him during the period right before lunch. Anyways, the few times he’s spoken to her, he’s realized that he doesn’t much care for an inoffensive type of person, although that shouldn’t be a surprise considering he keeps the company of one Richie Tozier.

Speaking of whom. “H-hey, Jenny, a-are they t-talking about Richie? T-Tozier?” he whispers. 

Her eyes widen. “Yeah, you haven’t heard? Apparently, he refused to kiss Marcia Fadden at Sally’s party on Saturday, really made a run for it when she tried, and now there’s graffiti about him in the girls’ room.”

“G-graffiti? Wh-what does it say?”

Jenny shakes her head frantically. “I can’t say it, it’s pretty crude. Here, I’ll write it for you.” She tears a bit of scrap paper out of her notebook, scrawling quickly. “You’re friends with him, right? You should probably let him know what’s being said about him. Practically all the girls are talking about it, and at least half the guys.” 

She hands him the scrap, all folded up. With a glance at his teacher, Bill unfolds it under his desk. Written on the paper in Jenny’s purple ink are the words RICHIE TOZIER SUCKS FLAMER COCK.

Heat rises to Bill’s face. Just because Richie didn’t want to kiss a popular girl at a party? It seems laughable, such a strong statement from something as benign as a rejected advance. 

Math seems to drag on forever, but when the bell finally goes Bill is out of his seat and bolting to his locker as fast as he can make it. Bill’s locker is the unofficial official meeting spot of the group between classes, partially because it’s the closest of all their lockers to the side entrance from where they can sneak out if they want to skip, and partially because it’s Bill’s, so of course they meet there.

Stan is already standing in front of the locker when Bill makes it there, nervously wringing his fingers. 

“D-did you hear about wh-wh-wh—”

“God, yeah, I had to hear it from Jeremy Chen of all people, if you can fucking believe it. I can’t believe anyone would write something so awful. Do you think it was Marcia who wrote it? Kind of explains why Richie was so weird at the end of the party, though. God, where the fuck is he?” 

Eddie and Ben walk up, both of them looking agitated. They had second period Social Studies together, much to the jealousy of the rest of the group. Eddie’s voice is tense as he speaks in hushed tones to Ben.

“—and he comes running down all like ‘we have to go right now, I’m sick’, and we didn’t really think anything of it but I guess he didn’t go through with it. People saying that he’s, well, you know— that just seems cruel. Hey, guys, have either of you seen Richie yet?” Eddie greets them, dark eyes scanning the hallway wildly as if Richie will just materialize at any second.

Bill and Stan shake their heads. 

Ben looks positively beside himself. “I know what it’s like to have nasty things written about you,” he says softly. “We’ve gotta find him, he’s probably pretty upset.”

Bill chastises himself for forgetting about Ben’s unfortunate history with graffiti. Even though Ben had shed some of his weight since middle school, becoming broader and more muscular, his former locker was still littered with cruel names and phrases. 

“Upset enough to h-have a smoke?”

There’s a spot outside, along the far edge of the school, that used to be a favorite of Richie and Bev. They would skip class to sit there for hours, smoking and shooting the shit, joined periodically by the other members of their group in-between classes or during a free period. After Bev had moved, Richie had seen little point in skipping class without anyone to listen to his impression of what dull Mr. Thompson was probably going on about in English. He had tried to bring Eddie out there a few times, but that usually resulted in a long lecture about where exactly they’d end up if they became high school dropouts. He would say it like that, too, _became_ dropouts, like it wasn’t so much an action as a state of being. Anyways, Eddie refused to smoke, so Richie had more or less given up on the spot a few years prior.

That’s where they found him today, slumped against the brick wall amongst the yellowing grass where it grew long and wild, forgotten by a neglectful mower. He’s smoking, one hand flicking ash into the wind and the other loosely hugging his knees to his chest.

The group approaches him, and Bill realizes with a spike of dread that he has no idea what to say. Does he even know about the rumors? No, of course he knows, otherwise he wouldn’t be out here. What the fuck was he supposed to say?

“Hey, Rich. You taking up lung cancer again? Thought you quit that last year,” says Stan lightly. Richie smirks up at him, then wordlessly holds out the smoldering cigarette towards him. Stan smiles and reaches for it. Thank God for Stan, Bill thinks. He always knows the right thing to say, the way to communicate care without being too obvious about it. 

Eddie squawks and yanks the cigarette from Richie’s fingers before Stan can take it, stomping it out on the grass. “Really, Stan? You were gonna take that? Richie, you dipshit, are you _trying_ to get us all addicted? Lung cancer’s not a fucking joke, asshole, it’s real.” Eddie’s voice climbs higher with every indignant question and crude epithet, but his eyes are wide and sad. Bill remembers with a pang how it used to be Eddie who was the target of this type of thing, who got his name carved on the Kissing Bridge beside the word ‘fag’.

Richie’s hand comes up and encircles Eddie’s wrist, and he’s laughing incredulously. “What the fuck, Kaspbrak! You know a pack is almost two bucks now, right?”

Eddie stills under Richie’s touch, looking like he doesn’t know where to go from here. He was always the first member of the group to respond when someone was hurt, whether emotionally or physically, small hands seeking ways to heal and comfort. However, this nourishing instinct was at direct odds with his usual instinct when dealing with Richie, which was unthinking ire. After a slight pause, Eddie sits down beside Richie abruptly, crossing his legs so their knees are touching.

“Let’s just stay out here for lunch, okay? It’s actually nice outside, and we could all use a bit of a—no fucking smoking!” Eddie says as Richie rolls his eyes and pulls out his pack of cigarettes.

“Okay, cut the shit, I know why you’re all out here. ‘Richie Tozier sucks flamer cock’. Some girl I’ve never even spoken to came up and just said it to me, point blank, in first period. Not the most original, but whatever. I’m fine, guys, seriously.” Richie’s voice is light, but his expression is closed off, unreadable. 

“W-we’re gonna cl-clean it off, Rich,” Bill says in a moment of inspiration. 

Eddie looks up at him in disbelief. “You do know that it’s in the _girls’_ bathroom, right? Do you even know how to get Sharpie off a bathroom stall?”

“O-ok, well then w-we’ll scribble it o-out. A-and it’s f-fine, we’ll only b-be in there for a second.”

Eddie still looks skeptical. “I’ll stay out here with Richie, thanks. You know they can fine you for going into the girls’ bathroom, right? You could even go to _jail_, Bill. Like, I’m not telling you what to do, but are you really equipped for _jail_?”

Bill feels mildly annoyed. He’s reasonably sure that that’s not true but worry tugs at the back of his mind anyways. No, it’s fine, Eddie always says these types of things with such confidence but his information is all from his mother, who’s insane, so. “Wh-whatever, I’ll take th-the r-risk. D-does anyone h-have a Sharpie?”

***

“I can’t believe I was the _only one_ who had a Sharpie. I believe that Ben doesn’t, but I think Eddie was lying,” says Stan as he stands next to Bill in front of the girls’ washroom. “He writes his name on all of his school supplies, there’s no way he doesn’t have one.”

Bill takes a breath. “R-rock paper scissors f-for it?” 

Stan always picks paper.

Stan enters the washroom a few moments later, shooting Bill a quick look before disappearing around the bend, Sharpie already uncapped in his hand. Bill paces back and forth across the entrance restlessly, trying to come up with the least creepy thing to say if a girl tries to go in. He’s staring at his shoes as he paces, mentally egging Stan on, when he hears the gentle sound of someone clearing their throat. His head shoots up, eyes meeting a girl who must be a ninth or tenth grader. Fuck. He freezes, and she flushes and makes a move to pass him.

“W-wait, y-you can’t g-go in th-th—my fr-friend. Th-there was an emergency.” He can feel heat rising to his cheeks, his heart beating in his throat. 

At this moment, Stan emerges, looking faintly embarrassed. A blush sits high on his cheekbones, and it intensifies as the girl’s eyebrows raise. 

“Oh… okay, sure,” she says knowingly, and continues walking down the hall.

“What the fuck did you tell her?” Stan hisses.

Bill grins at him, feeling the rush of adrenaline. “D-don’t worry ab-b-bout it. You did it?”

“Yeah, really scribbled it out. Nothing but a black box there now. Fuck, I thought for sure someone was gonna come in.”

When they make it back outside, Richie, Eddie, and Ben are in good spirits. Richie’s talking animatedly, bickering with Eddie, and twin pink spots have appeared on Ben’s round cheeks from the crisp air. 

“There they are_, _fuck, took ya long enough!” Richie exclaims as he sees them approach. “Any girls try to get in while you were doing the deed?” 

“Y-yeah, one, b-but I j-just told h-her it w-was an e-emergency,” Bill says with a wicked grin. “I w-was keeping wa-watch.” 

Stan’s eyes widen as he looks at Bill. “Seriously, dude? An _emergency?_”

Richie dissolves into cackles. “Some girl thinks Staniel shat his pants! Oh man, I can’t believe I missed that!”

“Fuck, Bill! She saw my fucking face after, too!”

“She probably doesn’t think you shat your pants, Stan,” Ben says kindly. “In that case, you wouldn’t need the washroom anymore.”

Richie is clutching his stomach now, laughing uproariously.

Bill feels a rush of affection for his friends, triumphant in having removed the offending graffiti and getting Richie laughing again. He hopes that everyone will forget about the stupid rumor and that Richie will return to his old self, no quiet spells, just the way things used to be.

***

When the bell rings to signal the end of the school day, Bill waits patiently by his locker for Richie. Richie was always eager to get out of there as soon as physically possible, sometimes not even stopping to wait for Bill to catch up before bounding out the doors. Ten minutes passed, and the students milling around the halls dwindled. Lockers shut, goodbyes were said, and still Bill waited for Richie. Maybe he had gone home with Eddie? They did that sometimes, on good days when Eddie thought he could convince his mom to allow Richie in the car with them. But Richie usually would let Bill know ahead of time, and anyways, Eddie had been saying at lunch that his mom had been in a particularly crabby mood lately.

After fifteen minutes or so, Richie shows up, looking distracted.

“H-hey, Rich, about t-time. Wh-where were you?” Bill asks, trying to keep the concern out of his voice.

“Yeah, Billy, just needed to take a piss. Let’s get out of here.”

They walk in silence for a few minutes, cresting the hill and heading towards their street. It’s windy, much cooler than it had been earlier in the day, and Bill feels his hands getting raw and numb. He glances over at Richie, who is doggedly looking at his shoes and chewing at his lower lip. Bill takes a breath. He can’t not talk to Richie about what happened at school, not with the way he’s acting now.

“Richie, a-are you o-okay? L-like, like w-with everything th-that happened today?” Bill asks gently. He doesn’t want a repeat of this morning, when Richie snapped at him, but Bill can’t in good conscience watch his usually boisterous friend brood like this.

Richie sighs, a loud and frustrated noise. “It’s just a stupid piece of graffiti, it’s fucking lame is what it is. Anyways, you know what they say, sticks-and-stones and all of that.” He waves his hand dismissively.

“W-well, yeah, b-but it’s okay if you’re b-bothered by it.” Bill says, hoping his tone is landing more on consoling than infantilizing. 

Richie just shrugs.

“I b-bet everyone w-will forget ah-about it by the end of th-the week. Maybe even s-sooner, if someone does something embarrassing.”

Another shrug.

Silence falls heavy around them as they walk. Richie’s face is turned away from Bill, studying the rows of houses and leafless skeletons of trees with deep interest. Bill feels nervous, somehow, a tightness inhabiting in his chest. It’s definitely not fine, there’s something wrong here. He’s unsure at this point exactly where the issue lies—is it in the graffiti, the rumors, the incident with Marcia at the party? Is it something else altogether? Since the graffiti is gone (thanks, Stan) and he doesn’t even know what happened with Marcia beyond Richie’s vague explanation, he settles on the rumors.

“It’s okay, Rich, we know y-you’re not g-g-gay. It d-doesn’t matter what other p-people say, we kn-know.” 

Richie’s whole body stiffens up for a second, almost imperceptibly, still turned away from Bill. The tight feeling in Bill’s chest gets worse, an invisible straitjacket compressing his insides. He’s resigned himself to walk the rest of the way in tense silence when Richie’s breath starts hitching and ebbing in a telltale pattern, and Bill’s stomach drops.

Bill has only seen Richie cry a handful of times during the years he’s known him, and every time he had, it was always done with as much melodrama as humanly possible. When they were ten years old, Richie fell off his bike and had started wailing and hollering with such gusto that it had set Eddie off too, though the latter was wholly unharmed apart from bearing witness to Richie’s histrionics. In all of their friendship, however, Bill has never seen Richie like this, all quiet and weepy. It’s disconcerting to say the least. 

Richie stops walking, big, glass-bead tears rolling down his cheeks. His nicotine-stained fingers come up to scrub at his face, smearing tears and snot into his pores. Bill moves closer and puts a hand on Richie’s back uncertainly, a cold spike of dread impaling his heart as he realizes what he said.

Oh shit.

Bill speaks as gently as he can. “Richie… a-are you—is it—I mean, are y-you—gay? Th-that’s—it’s okay i-if you a-are!” he amends quickly. 

This seems to make it worse. Richie covers his entire face with his hands, shoulders seizing in fits and starts. Bill’s stomach roils uncomfortably. He guides them both to sit down on the curb, rubbing Richie’s back in smooth, sweeping strokes like his mother used to do before, before Georgie. He pushes the thought from his mind. 

After a few minutes, Richie takes a huge, shuddering breath. There’s a thin film of fog on his glasses. “Jesus, sorry, Bill. Fuck. It’s been—today was a lot.” He doesn’t elaborate.

“I’m r-really sorry, Rich, I sw-swear I d-didn’t mean to—“

Richie stands abruptly. “Can we—can we not talk about this right now? You didn’t do anything wrong, I just—I just wanna go home now.”

Bill’s chest aches. “Of course, Richie. L-let’s go.”

When they reach the Toziers’ house Bill puts a hand on Richie’s arm. “S-see you t-tomorrow?” he asks softly. 

Richie just nods, running a hand through his mussed curls before striding up his driveway. Bill feels overwhelmed, suddenly, with the weight of the last half hour. He wonders if Richie’s parents know, or if any of the other Losers know. His mind rolls over itself as he continues to his house, and he feels like he’s failed, somehow, as a friend. 

He spends much of that night lying in bed, making categorical lists in his head of the best and worst things to say to Richie when he next saw him. It makes Bill’s head hurt—he doesn’t want to alienate Richie or scare him off with too much sappy shit but he also can’t bear the thought of Richie alone in the wake of the big, sweeping emotions Bill imagines must accompany this sort of thing.

Bill had navigated rocky waters with his friends before, but nothing like this. Isn’t it kind of sad, he thinks, that they’ve gone through so much together—as a group there’s been grief, abuse, bullying, even killing a fucking monstrous clown in the sewers—but this is where Bill feels the most out of his depth, this is where Richie starts getting moody and quiet. Because he likes boys. 

He has trouble falling asleep that night, heart in turmoil over the day’s events. When he finally does, he dreams of their school filling up with seawater, stormy even inside the narrow hallways, and he’s drowning, drowning, drowning.

***

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1992

Bill’s been anxious all morning, pacing around his room and rehearsing his words carefully. He leaves for Richie’s before he normally would—if he’s even a little bit late he’s afraid Richie will take that as a rejection of sort, and more than anything he wants Richie to feel like he can open up to him. Especially if nobody else knows—Bill’s stomach twinges uncomfortably when he thinks of how long Richie might have held this enormous secret close to his chest. He shakes his hands out as he walks up to the Toziers’ front door, trying to dispel some of the anxiety gripping him. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s gonna be fine. He rings the doorbell.

There’s a slight delay, then the noise of footsteps from inside. The door swings open, and Bill is met with the smiling face of Maggie Tozier.

“Oh, Bill, hi!” she says. “Are you here for Richie? Sweetie, he’s not feeling well today. He said to tell you that he’ll see you tomorrow.”

Fuck. Bill hopes desperately that this isn’t because of what happened yesterday, that he’s just got a cold or something.

“O-okay, Mrs. Tozier. T-tell Richie… I’ll come by after s-school, to g-give him the h-homework he missed.”

Maggie touches his arm affectionately. “That’s so sweet. I’ll see you later, then, okay? Have a good day at school.” She’s known Bill and his family since he and Richie were young, and as such she’s very maternal towards him. He feels comforted in the fact that Richie’s parents are there to watch out for him, but he wonders guiltily if they would be just as kind if they _knew_. They don’t strike him as the homophobic type, but in Derry it was hard to tell. At times you would hear the most hateful words coming from the mouths of people who had been nothing but kind before.

Bill’s classes drag on painfully. The rumors are still circulating amongst their peers, leaving him unable to think about anything but Richie. At lunch, the other Losers ask after Richie concernedly, as Bill was the last person to have seen him. Bill just tells them what Maggie had said that morning. They exchange skeptical looks and change the subject, though Eddie’s expression remains pinched and closed off for the rest of the period.

At the end of the day, Bill makes his way to all of Richie’s classes, gathering a small pile of assignments and readings. His teachers are unimpressed, as Richie is a notorious class-skipper, but Bill’s soft-spoken nature has made him extremely popular with the teaching staff, so he manages to persuade them to cut his friend some slack. 

When he gets to the Toziers’ house after school, Maggie lets him in.

“He’s been up in his room all day, poor thing. I’ve been bringing him food and medicine every now and then, but you just let me know if you boys need anything else, alright?”

“Th-thanks, Mrs. Tozier,” Bill says, already taking the stairs two at a time.

He knocks on Richie’s door softly before entering, hit immediately with the familiar Richie-scent, equal parts musty and comforting and imbued with the faintest hint of weed smoke. It’s interesting, he thinks, how a bedroom ends up smelling like that, like the most concentrated form of the smell of a person’s hair and skin and clothes.

Richie is lying in his bed with the duvet all awash over his chest, dark hair curling wildly around his pillowed head like a halo. His hair has gotten long, Bill notices suddenly. He sees Richie almost every day, had barely noted a change from day to day, but now it becomes apparent how much time has passed, how long they’ve been friends—they’re older now, and things are harder, but it releases some of the tension from Bill’s chest all the same. It’s still just Richie.

His window is open a crack; smoldering end of a joint held lax between his long fingers. He looks up as Bill enters, and wordlessly holds it out towards him.

“Bold t-to smoke when y-your mom is in the house,” Bill says in way of greeting, but he takes a pull from the joint anyways.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like she’ll notice anyways. I dunno if she even knows what weed smells like, she probably thinks it’s, like, my cologne or something.”

“There’s her f-first mistake, as-assuming that you wear c-cologne.”

Richie snorts. “Touché.”

Bill drops the pile of papers on Richie’s chest unceremoniously, eliciting a grunt of surprise from him. “H-homework. Since you th-think you can just sk-skip out on school, I guess.”

Richie stubs out the roach on the small ashtray on his nightstand, tossing the papers across the room. “I’m _sick_, Billy.”

“Yeah r-right. Y-you’re just hiding, and m-moping.” Bill sits down on the edge of Richie’s bed, feeling both annoyed and concerned. “Everyone’s worried ab-about you.”

Richie is silent for a minute, before scrubbing a hand over his face and taking a deep breath. “Billy, yesterday… before we walked home, I went to take a piss and— there were some senior boys, in the washroom. They—they had heard the—rumors, or the truth, or I’m just that fucking obvious— and they, like, _surrounded_ me. Started yelling at me, ‘fuck off faggot, stop looking at my cock you fucking queer’.”

Something in Bill’s stomach twists painfully. “Rich, wh-what… we can report them, do y-you know their na—”

“No, we can’t. That’s my point. That’s why I can’t— If I report them, I might as well stand up in front of everyone and announce it, hey everyone, all of your fucking stories and rumors are true, thanks-very-much. Please continue your regularly scheduled tormenting, now with one hundred percent less plausible deniability. Not like the school would ever have any sympathy for a fucking queer, anyways,” Richie grumbles, avoiding eye contact with Bill.

“D-don’t… Richie, you’re not—”

“A fucking queer?” Richie finally meets Bill’s gaze, and his expression is desperate. “I am, though, Billy.”

Bill puts a gentle hand on Richie’s calf through his quilt. He doesn’t know what to say, at a loss for the words or actions necessary to make his friend feel better. He resents his small-town upbringing now, his limited scope of the world, too inexperienced to have faced anything like this before and too young to know of the resources to come up with any sort of solution. 

“H-how about… how about you c-come to school for the r-rest of the week, and on Friday we’ll all have a sleep-sleepover at mine, okay? It’ll be f-fun. I th-think that this will blow over, Rich, I do. People will f-forget, and they’ll leave you al-alone.” This barely scratches the surface of all the things Bill wants to say, but he hopes it will make Richie feel even a little bit better.

Richie sighs. “Yeah, okay, that sounds good. Thanks.” A beat of silence. “D’you wanna play Super Nintendo?”

“Fuh-fuck yeah.”

Richie is the only Loser to have a TV and a Super Nintendo in his room, courtesy of Maggie and Went from last Christmas, the lucky bastard. He hosts tournaments, sometimes, all of them taking turns trying to beat Richie who, of course, had ample time to practice in-between tournaments. Now, they lay askew on Richie’s messy bed, playing _Street Fighter II_ for a few hours. Bill only wins occasionally, during the times that Richie is trying to distractedly eat Cheetos with one hand and play with the other, but he savors the chance to return to normalcy with Richie, easy camaraderie and jokes after a few days of unbearable heaviness. As the clock approaches five and Bill is beat for the umpteenth time, he stretches and starts gathering his backpack and jacket from where they’ve been tossed haphazardly to the corner of Richie’s room amongst the mess. Once he’s ready, he turns to Richie, who’s still sprawled on his bed in his pajamas.

“Hey, Rich… you know—you know we all l-love you, right? N-no matter what.”

Richie rolls his eyes, but he smiles and holds out a hand to Bill. Bill takes it, and Richie squeezes their clasped hands.

Bill squeezes back. “I’ll s-see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Seven-forty-five sharp, Big Bill, don’t be late.”

***

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1992

The weather gets colder as the week passes, and Bill is right, people do start to forget. Richie shows up to all of his classes for the rest of the week, ignoring the whispers and pointed looks in the hallways, and it takes the heat of the rumors down a little bit. It loses its entertainment value, really, when the kid who’s being gossiped about is right in front of you and has been known to throw a punch. The rest of the Losers do their best to return to their usual dynamics, although during that week there is a notable increase in kindly touches to Richie’s shoulders, sections of mandarin orange passed his way around the cafeteria table, offers to accompany him to the washroom. 

On Friday evening, Bill’s parents retire early to their room, leaving the main floor for Bill and his friends. The one benefit to having parents like his, Bill thinks, is that when he makes a request for them to give him space, it’s taken up gladly and without question.

It’s still an hour before his friends are scheduled to arrive, Bill still completing a compulsory clean of the kitchen when Richie shows up with Stan in tow.

“Whaddup, sorry we’re super early—"

“—he picked me up, Bill, _laid_ on his horn until I finally got in the car even though I wasn’t remotely ready—”

“—ok, Stanley, we get it. I wanted—I need to talk to you guys, wanted to get a chance before everyone else shows up.”

Bill nods, leading them wordlessly into the kitchen. They gather around the counter, Stan looking distinctly perturbed, before Richie takes a breath.

“Okay, so basically, Bill knows… something… that I want to tell you, too, Stan. The original Losers, you guys should know.”

“W-well, we’re not all the originals, not w-without Eddie,” Bill points out. He’s relieved that someone else will know, someone who might be able to help figure out a way to alleviate the stress that’s so clearly been weighing on Richie, but Eddie is probably Richie’s best friend, and it feels odd for Richie to just leave him out like that. 

Richie just shakes his head, gazing fixatedly at the off-white laminate countertop. “No, I just—I can’t—he might not— I just want you guys to know. That’s it.”

Bill is perplexed by Richie’s agitation at the mention of Eddie. Maybe they’ve gotten in a fight over something, he thinks. There’s not much of a chance to contemplate this any further, because Stan makes an impatient noise.

“Please, guys, just tell me.”

“Okay, fuck, Staniel, I’m getting there, don’t get your panties in a twist,” Richie says. “I—you know those rumors that are going around school? That I’m—you know?”

Stan frowns slightly, but nods an apprehensive affirmative.

“Basically, they’re true. Like, some of them. It’s not like—I haven’t blown anyone, or anything, but—the gist of it, it’s true,” Richie rushes out.

Stan’s eyes widen a modicum, his lips parting slightly. “Oh, Richie… thanks for telling me,” he says, putting a hand on Richie’s upper arm. “We all love you, so much, and that’s never gonna change.” 

Bill feels the tension dissipate in the room. Stan’s always been so good with Richie, so good with everyone, always knowing what to say. It had taken Bill a full day of careful consideration to conclude that the best thing to do was to reassure Richie of his friendship, but Stan knew almost instinctively.

Richie gives them both a shaky smile. “I love you guys, too. Not in _that_ way, obviously, I’m completely committed to Mrs. K, but—”

Stan rolls his eyes. “Eddie’s not even here, why the fuck would you make a your mom joke now, of all times?”

“Your mom jokes are all I know, Stanny. They’re my love language,” Richie says, then goes crimson.

They help Bill tidy up and put pizza rolls into the oven before the rest of the Losers start to show up. As they’ve gotten older, hangouts with all six of them have become rarer and thus infinitely more precious. The first event of any sleepover is to catch Mike up on all the school gossip, which he always receives graciously and with some confusion as the rest of them trip over each other trying to explain the who and where and what of every happenstance. This time is no different, but there’s one specific incident that’s left out, unmentioned by everyone. Bill is grateful for his friends, their loyalties laid clear.

Before long, they settle into the well-loved activity of drinking while playing cards, usually with an element of gambling. Since as a whole they have very little money, they mostly use candy or, on one memorable occasion, a dime bag of weed from Richie that had caused Eddie and Stan to immediately drop out of the game. Well, Eddie generally abstained from playing, asserting that gambling was an insidious habit that he refused to entertain, but he would often take up residence on Richie’s lap and whisper tips into his ear. Together they had won many a poker tournament, a fact much disputed by Stan who insisted that Eddie was looking at the rest of the groups’ hands when he was wandering around for ‘snacks’. 

This time, they’re playing blackjack with Mike & Ikes as the gambling tender. Eddie has gotten himself a glass of cream soda with a capful of vodka fastidiously added and is about to climb up onto Richie’s lap when Richie shoves him off abruptly.

“Rich, what the fuck! You almost spilled my drink!”

Everyone goes silent, staring at Richie.

“There’s another chair right there, Eddie, just pull it up,” Richie says self-consciously. “Dunno why you always insist on being, like, _on_ me all the time.”

Eddie pulls up the chair, looking distinctly miffed. Richie had never fussed over this before, in fact, he used to pat his thighs invitingly every time Eddie returned from the kitchen. Bill looks at Stan uncertainly, but Stan is staring at Richie with a strange look on his face.

Richie loses spectacularly, mostly because Eddie is doggedly refusing to give him any tips. Ben wins, smiling sweetly as he sweeps up the Mike & Ikes into a rough pile.

“Hanscom coming in hot, the dark horse of the tournament,” Richie booms in a sports announcer Voice. “And would you look at that, he’s decided to generously donate all his winnings to the charity of Rich—”

“Shut up, Richie,” Ben says amiably, eliciting raucous laughter and a chorus of ‘ooooh’s from the rest of the group.

By the time they retire to the living room to watch a movie, they’re all a little bit drunk. Eddie’s still quiet, but Richie seems to have recovered from his earlier reservation, as he immediately situates himself beside Eddie on the couch. 

“Eddie, baby, I’m sorry. C’mon, you know you can’t watch this movie without me next to you,” Richie coos tipsily. They’re watching _Nightmare on Elm Street 5_, having worked their way through the series one at a time during their group sleepovers. Eddie had made his distaste for slasher films very clear, but once they had started, he had maintained that they had to finish the series. He usually hid his face in the crook of Richie’s neck for the better part of the movie, anyways. Now, he sighs dramatically, but tucks himself into Richie’s side, nonetheless.

This seems to appease Richie, as he pulls a blanket over their intertwined legs and starts chanting “Fred-die, Fred-die, Fred-die!”

Bill usually has no problem with horror movies, but there’s something about this particular installment that instills a deep unease in his gut. He remembers when the movie had been in theatres, a few years prior, and though none of them had seen it at the time it seems to elicit a similar reaction in the rest of his friends. They’re all somewhat reserved when the movie ends, disquietude saturating the room, felt by all except Eddie, who’s asleep on Richie’s shoulder.

They settle down a little while later, sleeping bags spread out Tetris-like on Bill’s living room floor. The chatter slows as Bill hurries around getting everyone extra pillows or blankets or glasses of water, wanting everyone to feel comfortable in this house that he himself finds unliveable. Once the last of the drowsy conversations begin to taper off, Bill gets up to turn off the lights. He walks blindly back to his spot, carefully stepping over the bundles lying pell-mell on the shag carpet. Some of his friends have already dozed off, but he meets Mike’s gaze during one last perfunctory scan of the room. Mike smiles sheepishly at him from the ground, which he returns, feeling at once the distinct intimacy of a dark room, his friends sleepy and vulnerable in a way that they so rarely got to see in one another. Mike’s eyes drift closed while Bill’s continue their survey of the room, alighting on Richie’s loose form. He’s laid out on his stomach, one arm propping up his lolling head, gazing at a sleeping Eddie. Eddie is all curled up towards Richie, his face smooth and young and lax with sleep. Richie’s expression is so open and unguarded that Bill feels at once like he’s seen something he shouldn’t have, some private and tender emotion that Bill can barely comprehend. He looks away quickly and accidentally catches Ben’s eyes. 

Bill almost never hangs out with Ben outside the group, at least partially due to the unfortunate circumstances of their crushes on the same girl during the first unstable months of their friendship. Neither had held any lingering resentment towards the other, but mutual awkwardness is a force both powerful and alienating to a teenage boy and as such, the two rarely interacted on such individual terms. Now, Ben’s gaze darts to Richie and back to Bill, a question in his eyes that Bill isn’t fully sure how to parse out. Bill just shakes his head minutely, unsure of what Ben is asking and unable to escape the clawing feeling that he’s intruding on something not meant for him. He lies down quickly, staring into the murky dark until he drifts off into sleep.

He resurfaces some indeterminate time later to whispering.

“ –gave her my number, but she never called. Maybe she forgot about me or something, I dunno.” Ben’s voice is hushed.

“She must have lost it or something, she wouldn’t just forget like that. There’s no way she could ever just forget ol’ Benny Hans-ome.”

Richie. His whisper was distinct, always just a little too loud to be a proper whisper but magnitudes lower than his normal volume. They’re talking about Bev, Bill realizes. He’s guiltily relieved that Ben hasn’t heard anything from Bev either, because when he had neglected to receive a call from her in the months after her move a small, fearful part of him had thought she had made her choice between the two of them.

“It’s no big deal, but you know. I really… I really liked her.”

A few moments pass in a lull, and then Ben speaks again.

“What about you? Do you have any… do you like anyone?” His voice is imbued with the greatest gentleness. 

That uncomfortable feeling in back in Bill’s chest, the sense that he’s encroaching on an intimate moment. He squeezes his eyes shut and wills himself to fall back asleep.

Richie must nod, because Ben whispers encouragingly, “Who is it? You obviously don’t—you don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.”

A long silence falls, so long that Bill feels himself dozing, and then—

“I—nobody knows. I can’t—I dunno.”

When Ben’s voice comes again, it’s hesitant. “Could I… could I guess? Who it is?”

Richie huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, why fuckin’ not? Shoot.”

There’s the rustle of bodies shifting, and then Ben’s whisper, now dropped so low that words are indistinguishable from breath, and then—the _whump_ of a body being tackled to the ground. Ben starts giggling, the sound muffled by what Bill suspects is Richie’s sweaty, chocolate-stained palm.

“_Jee-_zus, Haystack, what the fuck!” Richie’s laughing incredulously. “Holy fucking shit. I didn’t actually think—you can’t just drop that shit on me at two in the fuckin’ morning!”

“It’s just—I know how you look at someone when you—feel that way about them,” Ben says, impossibly kind. “I promise, I haven’t said anything to anyone, and I won’t. But you should consider—Richie, we all love you, and will all continue to love you. Including—probably _especially_—him.”

Richie takes a breath. “Thanks, Benny. I really appreciate that.” There’s some rustling, and Richie speaks again, sounding awkward. “I’m gonna—I need at least seven hours of sleep to fucking process that, so don’t fucking wake me up before nine, or I’ll kill you.”

Bill starts drifting again, half-asleep already. He feels guilty for being an accidental intruder on a very private conversation, but he’s still warmed over with affection for his friends. He tells himself he won’t dwell on who exactly the boy Richie’s crushing on is, that Richie will tell him in his own time. Still, his mind unhelpfully supplies a list of boys at their school that are maybe-gay, regrettably based on stereotypes and hearsay. Somehow, Bill can’t seem to picture Richie with any of them, can’t imagine Richie being into any of them. But, he reasons, he didn’t know Richie was even gay in the first place, plus Stan tells him all the time that he has a ‘chronic deficiency of common sense’. He thinks back to a couple years ago—at one point in time, he _did_ have a hunch that one of the Losers was gay, but—well, it wasn’t Richie, and he needs to remind himself that being clean and somewhat prim does not a gay boy make. He’s still considering the possible identity of Richie’s crush as he sinks deeper into slumber, buffeted by the tide of his friends’ breathing.

***

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1992

It all sort of comes to a head a week later.

School had been becoming more and more demanding, teachers cracking down on students to start seriously considering college, so suffice to say Bill hadn’t had a lot of time to ruminate over the ‘Richie situation’, as he had taken to calling it in his head.  
It’s meant to be one of the last decent Fridays of the year, so the Losers conspire to ride their bikes to school and go walking in the woods that afternoon. They dump their bikes at the mouth of the forest and start walking aimlessly, golden fall sunshine penetrating the skeletal trees and illuminating the brittle leaves that carpet the earth. Bill is content as he listens to his friends chattering, riffing off of one another and setting the cool air alight with rollicking laughter. 

The current topic is, for some reason, cannibalism.

“You can’t tell me you wouldn’t at least try it, like, once.”

“That’s fucking disgusting, Richie, what the fuck,” Stan says disapprovingly.

“Ok, fine, it’s probably condemned by like, the Jewish God, but—”

“The _Jewish God_? The Jewish God is just God, idiot. They’re all the same one.”

“Fuck, Stan, you sure about that? What about Allah?” Richie says this triumphantly, as if he truly has any sort of upper ground with Stan on the topic of religion. Stan, whose father is a rabbi. Richie, whose family stopped going to church when they stopped serving ‘the nice dry white’ at communion, according to Maggie Tozier.

Stan pinches the bridge of his nose. This gesture was not so much to stave off a headache as it was to let Richie know what a moron he was. “It’s still— Allah is still just God, Richie. Fuck.”

Richie looks skeptical. “Ok, whatever, the point being, imagine that God is looking the other way and you’re starving. Would you?”

“There are way too many variables to this scenario. Where am I? Do I have access to any other food? Who is the person?”

“D-do I have to k-kill the person? Or are th-they provided for-for me?” Bill asks, now getting quite curious as to the specifics. 

“Now _that’s_ what I’m talkin’ about! Fuck your boring-ass questions, Stan. If I said you had to do it yourself, Billy, would you?”

Bill considers this for a moment. “N-no, I don’t think so. But if the me-meat was already th-there, and I was starving, I th-think I would.”

“That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said, Bill,” Eddie pipes up. “At least if you killed them yourself you could know exactly where the meat came from and who the person was. What if the provided meat was ass meat, or, like, dick meat? What if it was dick meat from an old man with gonorrhea?”

Richie had started wheezing loudly from ‘ass meat’ onwards. “Fuck, Eds, I knew you’d jump at the chance to kill someone! Your sharp little teeth and small body are, like, specifically evolved for tearing off a good chunk of ass meat.”

Eddie sniffs haughtily. “I _never_ said I’d try it at all, only that if I did, I would prefer to kill them myself than be served mystery meat.”

“I don’t think I would. I wouldn’t want someone to eat me, ergo I should probably refrain from eating others.” Ben says reasonably.

“Fuck yeah, Haystack coming in with the moral implications! Golden fuckin’ rule, baby!”

“Okay, that’s not the golden rule. You know that, right, Richie? It’s important to me that you know that,” Stan says.

“W-would you eat s-someone, R-Rich?”

Richie takes a dramatic pause. “I already do. I eat Eddie’s mom every night!” He drawls out the last word, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. There’s a collective groan.

Eddie buries his face in his hands. “You fucking asshole. Was that whole thing just a set-up for a stupid ‘your mom’ joke? Really?” Even muffled by his palms, his voice is thick with exasperation.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand what mature love is like, Eds. Was that too much for your virginal ears?” Richie coos, covering Eddie’s pinkened ears with his hands. 

Eddie jerks his head out of Richie’s grasp. “Fuck off, Rich, you know I hate that. My ears are no more virginal than anyone else’s here,” he grumbles.

“Oh, Eddie, my dear, I beg to differ,” Richie says magnanimously. “Sweet young Eddie, never so much as seen a girl in his life, let alone kissed one.”

“Shows how much _you_ know. For your information, I was asked out by Amanda Hansen just yesterday.”

“Wh-what? Eddie, y-you never t-told us!” exclaims Bill, grinning. Eddie had never expressed any interest in any of the girls at their school before, but then again, he was the type of boy that was always a little bit late to the usual milestones, any effort to flourish quashed by his tyrannical mother. 

Excited babbling bursts out amongst the group, peppering Eddie with questions as the blood accumulates in his cheeks.

“Oh, come on, it’s not like he’s _actually_ gonna go out with her,” Richie scoffs, a little too loud. 

There’s a beat of silence, and then Eddie looks irritably at Richie.

“Uh, yeah, Rich, I said yes.”

“What the fu—why?”

Eddie shrugs defensively. “I dunno, I’ve never had a girlfriend before. I like Amanda, I took chemistry with her last year. Why not?” 

“Okay, Eds, I’m saying this because I care about you – you know it’s probably a joke, right? Like, when you show up, she’s gonna pants you or something and all her friends will laugh at you,” Richie says with a smirk.

Eddie scrunches his nose. “_Pants_ me? Was the last time you spoke to a girl in fourth grade?”

“The point is, girls like that don’t—”

“Don’t go out with guys like me?”

“That’s not what I— I just want to be realistic here.”

“Wooow, thanks a ton, Rich. Y’know, I thought you of all people would be the most excited for me, with how you’re always going on about how I need to ‘get myself laid’.” Eddie does air quotes to illustrate his point.

Richie flushes a deep pink. “I didn’t mean that you should just drop your pants for the first bitch who looks twice at you,” he snaps.

“I’m going on _one date_, dipshit, nobody’s dropping their pants.”

“That’s not what Amanda thinks.”

Eddie throws up his hands in frustration. “Why the fuck is this even an issue! I don’t seem to recall any problem when you were grinding up on Marcia at the party, but because it’s _me_, it’s—”

“Yeah, maybe that’s my point, I tried it on with Marcia and you saw how that turned out for me.”

Eddie narrows his eyes at Richie. “No, actually, I didn’t see how it turned out, because you never fucking tell me anything anymore! _You _say you tried it on with her, but I heard—you know what, never mind.”

They’ve stopped walking at some point and are standing head-on in the middle of the leaf-blanketed pathway. Bill’s heart has taken up residence in his throat, and he looks to Ben and Stan for a clue on what they should do—Stan just looks back at him with an uneasy expression, Ben glancing between Eddie and Richie nervously.

“Oh, no, Edward, please bestow upon us the great knowledge you’ve bequeathed from the gossipy bitches in your AP math class.” Richie’s voice is dripping with sarcasm.

“I wouldn’t need to listen to the gossip if you fucking talked to me! You can’t just—keep fucking secrets from me and then expect me to listen to anything you have to say about my life!”

Something in Bill’s brain clicks, and he has a sudden, gut-wrenching realization. The touches, the teasing, the cheek-pinching, calling Eddie ‘cute’, the way Richie was looking at Eddie at the sleepover—Fuck. He turns to Stan, and he must not conceal his surprise well enough because Stan is already looking at him sympathetically, shaking his head in helpless dismay.

“There’s no _secrets_, I have no fucking secrets that you need to fucking know!” Richie shouts, throwing his arms out in agitation. “You sound like such a fucking girl!”

“God, you’re so—stop acting like you fucking own me!” Eddie screeches.

“The only person who owns you, _Eddie-bear_, is your fucking mother,” Richie sneers. “And you let her.”

“Guys,” says Stan weakly. 

It’s already out of control, Bill thinks. Eddie’s face is pinched and his cheeks are twin pink blooms, his small hands clenched so tightly his fingers have gone white. Richie looks even worse, chest heaving with shallow breaths and flush creeping down his neck. 

“You know what, Richie,” Eddie hisses dangerously, “I think you’re just mad because you won’t have a leg up on me anymore. You won’t be able to make stupid fucking jokes about how _virginal_ I am when you’re the only one left who hasn’t—”

Richie shoves Eddie, hard. He hits the ground with a jarring lurch, shock written plain on his face. Bill doesn’t even remember springing into action but before he can process what happened he’s at Richie’s side, gripping his upper arm. He can feel Richie shaking badly under his fingers before Richie yanks his arm out of Bill’s hold, refusing to look at him. On the ground, Eddie looks momentarily close to tears, but his expression moves swiftly into fury. He scrambles to his feet.

“What the fuck is your problem, Richie? Just because you don’t want to kiss a girl, doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t!” Eddie screams.

Richie’s face goes beet red, expression screwed up in pain. Everyone is silent for a moment, and Bill stops breathing. His hand hovers over Richie’s bicep, ready to haul him back if he lunges at Eddie again. Eddie takes an apprehensive step backwards as Richie tenses up, and—

Richie bursts into tears. The tension bleeds out of his body as he buries his face in his hands, jagged sobs rupturing the still forest air. In an instant, Stan and Ben are there, rubbing circles into Richie’s back and murmuring words of comfort. 

Eddie looks shaken, his face crumpling a little. “Rich…” 

“Just fuck off,” Richie says through sobs.

Eddie makes a tiny frustrated sound, and then turns and stalks off the way they came, his small frame bowstring-tight. 

Stan catches Bill’s eye and nods his head in the direction Eddie went, still whispering soothingly to Richie. Bill gives a nod back and starts jogging after Eddie, feeling as though his chest has been torn open. His mind keeps replaying the awful argument and the anguished looks on both of his friends’ faces. It’s not fair, he thinks, it’s not fair that either of them should have to go through this. 

Bill has always been an athletic boy, and he catches up with Eddie easily. He’s made it back to the edge of the forest, and he whirls around when Bill calls his name.

“Fuck off, Bill,” Eddie spits. “You guys have all made it very clear who’s side you’re on.”

“Come on, Eddie, th-there’s n-no sides—"

“Like fuck there’s not! He fucking… he fucking pushed me over, he started that whole fucking thing and then… he starts fucking crying like_ I_ did something wrong, and… and you all just run to his side without question.” The heat is gone from Eddie’s voice, replaced with misery.

Bill’s chest aches. It’s at this moment, specifically, that he feels the most animosity towards his parents. His parents, who act like he’s not even there, who never ask him how he’s feeling beyond the compulsory ‘how was your day’. More than anything he wishes he could bring it up at the dinner table, just say, _‘Hey Mom, hey Dad, what do you do when you have a friend who’s gay?_ _What do you do when this friend starts feeling sad all the time, when he starts crying more and smiling less, and you think you know why? What do you do when this friend is maybe in love with another one of your friends, and what do you say when he treats the other friend badly because of it? How can you alleviate the shame and stress and sadness that comes from that? What then? What are you supposed to do?’_ He wonders vaguely if it would be different, if Georgie were still alive. In another life, is there a version of them that he could talk to about this, get advice from?

There’s no handbook for this, no rituals that can fix it, no books and no clues. He looks at Eddie’s pained expression, remembers Richie’s heartbroken sobs, and feels completely and utterly overwhelmed.

“Y-you… you have to t-talk to him. _Puh-please_, Eddie, I c-can’t tell you wh-why, but h-he didn’t mean it. What he s-said, I mean.”

Eddie lets out a frustrated huff. “I’ve given him so many opportunities to be nice to me, but he just—he’s always so rude, and says hurtful things, and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of giving him second chances.”

“H-how about, I-I’ll talk to him, and th-then I’ll call you i-if he says—”

“_No_, Bill. If he wants to talk to me, he can do it himself. Don’t play messenger for him, he needs to figure his shit out and—and he can talk to me when he’s ready to stop being such a dick.” Eddie hauls his bike upright and swings a leg over it. “I’ll see you Monday.” He pedals away swiftly, leaving Bill standing helplessly at the mouth of the woods. 

Bill covers his face with both hands and screams into them just a little bit.

By the time he collects himself and rejoins the others, a shaky calm has settled over him. From a distance, he sees Richie sitting on a fallen tree talking animatedly, Stan and Ben on either side of him. 

“—squirrels are _not_ the crackheads of the animal kingdom.” Stan’s tone is long-suffering, but Bill can hear the undercurrent of relief coloring his voice.

“Bullshit, Stanley, they absolutely are! What the fuck else would be?”

Stan sighs. “There isn’t—animals don’t smoke crack, Richie.”

“Yeah, but _if_ they could. Haystack, thoughts?”

Ben thinks for a moment. “You’re forgetting about raccoons.”

Richie cackles loudly. “_Fuck_ me, you’re right! I fuckin’ love your mind, Benny—hey, there he is! Big Bill, do you have any thoughts on which animal would smoke the most crack, given the chance?”

Richie’s face is still all red and splotchy, his cheeks silvery from drying tears, but he’s smiling up at Bill. Instead of answering the question, Bill leans down and wraps him in a tight hug. Richie’s hands come up to squeeze him back, and Bill suddenly gets the sense that they’re holding each other together. Two utterly fragile boys, a breath away from breaking. When he pulls away, Richie heaves a shuddering sigh.

“Thanks, Billy,” he says softly, laughing a little. “Fuck me, I’ve cried more over the last few weeks than I have in fucking years.” 

They sit for a while longer before getting up to trek back to their bikes. Bill feels a rush of gratitude towards Stan and Ben for cheering Richie up, but his mind still lingers on Eddie. Eddie, who thinks Richie hates him, even though it’s the complete opposite. He resigns himself to think more on the situation over the weekend and then talk to Richie about it on Monday.

When Bill gets home, his mom is cooking supper. She looks up as he walks by, and he wonders if she even realized he wasn’t at home.

“Oh, hi, Billy, how was your day?” his mom asks, chirpy and bright.

The exhaustion of the preceding hours hits him hard enough to bruise. He considers, for a moment, asking his mom what he should do in this impossible situation, asking her the questions that were running through his mind back in the woods. The thought almost makes him laugh. Instead, he feels his face crumple as the tears he’s been holding back finally break free.

***

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1992

Bill spends most of the weekend resting, as mandated by his mother. He had told her that he was suffering from school stress, brought upon by extra work and pressure about grades and colleges and whatnot. He mostly just draws in his bed, but on Sunday he goes to see a movie with Mike. It’s a welcome break, as Mike’s homeschooling keeps him at least one degree removed from high school drama at all times, but Friday’s events still weigh heavy on Bill’s mind. Once the movie’s over, they take the remainder of their popcorn and sit on a park bench to finish it. It’s getting colder, cold enough that they can see their breath materialize in front of them. There’s a lull in their conversation, and Bill finds himself impulsively opening up to Mike.

“Hey, Mike, c-can I ask y-you something? I’m having a… p-problem, with a friend, and I n-need advice.”

Mike regards him openly. “Of course. Is it a friend as in, ‘it’s me and I’m too afraid to say it’ or actually a friend?”

“It’s actually a f-friend, but it’s s-someone we both know and… h-he just—it’s a bit of a p-private issue.” Bill finishes sheepishly. He feels guilty about dancing around the subject like this, especially when he knows Mike would be supportive of Richie, but he reminds himself that it’s not his secret to tell.

Thankfully, Mike is one of the kindest and most understanding people Bill knows, which is precisely why he’s the best person to ask about this sort of thing. Well, that and the fact that he has the advantage of being blissfully unaware of the rumors circulating around their school. 

Mike nods encouragingly. “No problem. I’ll do my best.”

Bill takes a steadying breath. “S-so… my friend, he’s, well… I think h-he’s… g-gay. And I th-think… I think he might be in l-love with another friend. H-his best f-friend, I w-would say. But he won’t… he won’t t-tell him, and it’s making him… weird. Like, h-he gets snappish, and _r-rude_, and he’s puh-pushing this friend a-away. Plus, h-he just seems… sad, a lot of th-the time. Quiet, a-and h-he’s been c-crying a lot. I just d-don’t know what to d-do,” Bill says, voice growing softer and more solemn as he relays his problem to Mike. He feels the relief as soon as he gets it out, the weight lifting substantially from his chest.

As Bill speaks, he watches Mike’s expression morph from concern into a gentle realization. Mike’s been around Richie and Eddie enough, and he’s always been perceptive, it doesn’t take much to put two and two together.

After a moment of silence, Mike speaks cautiously. “If this is… who I think it might be… I think that his friend might feel the same way.”

Bill feels his eyebrows raise. “R-really? D-did he s-say something to you?”

“No, but, I mean… you saw how he was at the party.”

Bill thinks back to Halloween, remembers Eddie’s sullenness the moment Richie disappeared with Marcia. Fuck.

“O-oh. Oh, y-yeah. Well, th-that’s good then, I’ll just t-talk to—my friend, a-and—”

“I think this might be a conversation the two of them need to have, Bill,” Mike interjects kindly. “You could maybe nudge them in the right direction, get them to talk, but they really need to figure it out themselves.” 

Bill nods slowly. “Y-yeah, you’re right. I j-just, I hate s-seeing him like th-this. I h-hate how s-stubborn he is, how _both_ of th-them are. Th-thanks, Mike, I r-really appreciate it.”

“Thanks for talking to me about it. I won’t tell anyone, but I hope Richie knows that I’ll support him and love him no matter what,” Mike says thoughtfully. There’s a beat, and then he slaps a hand over his mouth. “Oh shit, I didn’t mean to say—I meant, your friend. Our friend.”

Bill laughs. “Y-you’re a good f-friend, Mikey. H-he knows, I think i-it’s just… h-hard for him, r-right now.”

They sit on the bench for a little longer, chatting aimlessly as they finish the last desiccated remnants of their popcorn. Bill feels lighter, less fragile, and he walks home feeling more hopeful than he has in weeks. 

***

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1992

On Monday, Bill is prepared when he reaches the Toziers’ house. Richie comes down the steps as Bill is walking up the driveway, dressed in a denim coat and plaid pants. They launch directly into their usual Monday morning conversation, catching up on each others’ weekends and bitching about schoolwork as if the last time they saw each other wasn’t in the midst of a mutual meltdown. Richie’s black-painted fingernails worry at a loose snap on his jacket nervously.

Bill decides to broach the topic about halfway to school, cutting off one of Richie’s long-winded accounts of the essay that he’s presumably being forced at gunpoint to write for his advanced English class. 

“Y-you really n-need to talk to Eddie, Rich. H-he’s really mad, he th-thinks you h-hate him.” Bill hopes his voice stays fairly steady.

Richie scrunches his nose. “I do hate him.”

Bill gives his friend the most withering look he can muster this early in the morning. “N-no, you d-don’t. He d-didn’t even d-do anything, you g-guys just— you _both_ s-said hurtful things on F-Friday. But I s-see… the w-way you l-look at him, Rich.”

Richie turns at that, stares at Bill with wide eyes. “How the fuck does everyone—if it’s that fucking obvious, why should I have to talk to him? He knows. Everyone fucking knows.” His voice is pained.

Bill makes a sound of frustration in the back of his throat. “He d-does _not_ know. He j-just thinks y-you’re a d-dick. Which, y-you sort of are.”

A few minutes pass in silence. When Richie speaks again, his voice is quiet.

“What if… I don’t want things to change, Bill. I don’t wanna ruin it, make things weird, scare him off, whatever.”

“R-Rich, things a-are changing a-anyways. I p-promise you, it will be n-no more w-weird than it is n-now. H-he can’t… he can’t take any m-more mixed s-signals from you,” Bill finishes gently. He promised he wouldn’t get involved, but there’s only so much stubbornness he can deal with. 

Richie huffs out a laugh. “Fuck, Billy, I didn’t realize you were our marriage counsellor now.” He seems to realize the implications of what he’s just said, because he scrunches his nose again in a cringe. “…Okay, fine, I’ll talk to him at lunch. If he even wants to talk.”

“H-he will, Rich.”

The morning passes uneventfully, classes all bleeding together. At lunch, the Losers find their regular table and fall back into their usual conversation. Eddie is ignoring Richie pointedly, despite Richie throwing a few stupid jokes in Eddie’s direction, attempting to elicit a response. Despite this, the rest of them do their best to gloss over any awkwardness and include both Eddie and Richie in the conversation. Bill is immensely thankful for the nth time that his friends are so patient, having not the strength nor the emotional stability to deal with another blow-up fight.

At the end of the lunch period, when everyone is starting to pack up and get ready for their afternoon classes, Richie reaches out and touches Eddie’s wrist gently. Eddie, who until this point had been sending out hostile vibes in Richie’s general direction, softens instantly.

“Eds,” Richie says gingerly. “can I walk you home after school today? I have to talk to you about something.”

Stan exchanges a knowing look with Bill. Bill just gives him a half-smile.

Eddie looks mollified by Richie’s sincerity. “Yeah, sure, Rich. I’ll just—I’ll go call my mom, tell her she doesn’t need to pick me up,” he says. A few paces from the table, he turns with his mouth open as if to say something, but after a moment just shakes his head and continues walking purposefully towards the front office, pink rising on his cheeks.

***

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1992

Tuesday morning dawns to snow-blanketed streets. Bill rushes to unearth his winter stuff in order to make it to Richie’s on time, eager to hear about how his talk with Eddie had gone. Bill had tried phoning him the night before, bouncing on the balls of his socked feet as he listened to the tinny ring of the Toziers’ landline. Went had picked up and informed Bill genially that Richie was still at a friend’s house and wouldn’t be home until later. Bill thought that must be a good sign, that they weren’t utterly and irredeemably divided, unless they had killed each other with mutual bullheadedness and were in fact lying at the bottom of the quarry in a heap. He wouldn’t put it past them.

The snow is still falling as Bill makes his way to Richie’s, dreamlike and downy. Before he can even reach the driveway, the front door flies open and Richie comes bounding down the steps, breathless as he joins Bill. He’s still wearing his usual denim coat, far too light for the weather, but has now added a garish knit bobble hat to his ensemble. He’s beaming, happier than Bill’s seen him in a long time, and affection closes around Bill’s heart like a vice. 

“Well, Big Bill, I have some news for you,” Richie says, his cheeks bright cherry against the pale snow. “Can I get a drumroll, please?”

Bill grins, patting out a rapid beat on his thighs.

After a sufficiently dramatic pause, Richie declares, “As of last night, I have officially had my first kiss.”

Bill’s jaw drops. “Rich…! O-Oh my god! S-so I t-take it you t-told—”

“That’s right, I told Mrs. K how I feel, and I made sweet love to her all night while Eddie sulked in his room.” Richie’s tone sounds like it was aiming for lewdness but fell a little short and landed mistakenly on affectionate.

Bill just shakes his head, grinning uncontrollably. “I-I’m so happy for y-you, Richie. I’m happy f-for you b-both.”

Richie slings an arm over Bill’s shoulders. “Thanks, Bill. Seriously. I know it’s been—I just, I really appreciate your support, even when I was being kind of a dick. Okay, definitely a dick,” he amends when Bill shoots him a look. “Eds and I—we really owe you one.” 

Bill shoves Richie playfully. “Y-you guys d-don’t owe me a-anything, all th-those years of s-stubbornness, that’s all y-you. A-anyways, you can pay me back by n-not, like, ditching the r-rest of us to go m-make out or something.”

“Ah, Billy, you know I can’t promise that.”

They continue their walk to school in amiable conversation, and Bill feels warmth flood his chest. They’re gonna be alright, he thinks, tilting his head up to watch the snow falling past him like eternity. We’re gonna be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> title co-opted from the [wallows song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROAsV3UuEBY) of the same name
> 
> a couple of things:  
\- the song richie's singing at the party is [black or white](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2AitTPI5U0) by michael jackson, released in 1991  
\- the SNES was released in summer 1991, richie got it for christmas '91, street fighter ii was released for SNES in north america in summer '92  
\- nightmare on elm street 5 was released summer '89 when the kids took down it  
\- the graffiti plot point is from it chapter 2, there's a scene where bev's in a bathroom stall and that exact phrase is written on the wall
> 
> i think that's it! i hope you liked it, please let me know what you think!  
i'm [here on tumblr](https://walloes.tumblr.com/)


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